A different take on Aikar's 'How to make Rupees Fast'.

Mining is good, but it is slow. Chopping trees is excellent, but it is also fantastically boring. Ultimately, there is no way around the fact that you need to invest a lot of time to get money, regardless of what activity you are doing.

This, at least, was my thought process when I first entered EMC. Guess what, I hate grinding, so I found a different solution.

The first thing that you are going to want to do is explore your local SMP economy. Simply spamming /v +shop and /v +mall and writing down places that look particularly big or impressive is an excellent start. A quick tip for new players. In the beginning, fancy shops are always your best bet. Look for shops that are large, have offers both to buy and sell items, and have a large selection of items. Usually these people will have a fairly stable source of income and a fast turnover rate, both of which are a must have for what you are about to do.

There are now two alternatives to raw material gathering that you can take, that Aikar mostly glossed over (with fairly good reason, as these are a lot less common).

Fabrication:

As Aikar mentioned, fabricated materials often sell for more than their raw components. Cobblestone is great, but stone bricks usually sell for around 30-60% more. This rule holds true for nearly every item in the game, although recently enderchests are a notable exception to this rule (probably partially my fault, actually, but that is beside the point). You can use this to your advantage, as really time consuming to craft items, (such as most redstone devices, books/bookcases, minecart materials, utility items, ect.) often sell for far more than they are worth in raw materials.

Some things to look out for:

Bookcases (I actually made my first 100K on bookcases, they sell for a suprising amount)TNT (Also a great profit, if you can find someone who buys it, which is rather rare)Redstone componentsMinecart/Minecart tracksStone/Sandstone/Red Sandstone bricks of various types.Quartz blocks (Lot of money in this, but there is the issue that you have to mine the quartz...)Dyes/Dyed Items

And now, the second way, Commodity trade:

Nearly all commodity trade is based on the assumption that you have a fairly stable material reserve or a good shop that you can buy items from, so it is advised that you have a few thousand rupees spare before you put a lot of time into this.

In this kind of specialized trade, there is only one rule. The weirder, the better.

Something that takes a while to learn on here is that stuff that might be COMPLETLY USELESS is worth a lot of money simply because it is either rare or a pain in the butt to get in any large amount. This particular strategy is great for people who object to a life of passive farming, and want to mess around and explore more. Keep in mind that this does involve a lot of gathering, it is just more cost-efficient grinding than mining or logging would be.

Lilypads: Amazingly, these sell for anywhere from 10-20 Rupee's apice... Or about 30K/swamp you loot.Andesite/Diorite/Granite: Not a whole lot of money here, but I have yet to find a shop that actually had any notable amount of this in stock, so it is super easy to sell.Horse Armor: Sells for a rediculous amount (up to 5k for diamond armor). The problem being you have to find it first...ClayPoisonous Potatoes: I kid you not, they go for 5R apiece, and you can mass farm them.Potions

Now, the final step: Intra-server trade.

If you can get yourself a healthy nest egg of a few hundred thousand rupees, buy enough vaults to get rid of the opening charge. Trust me, that thing just eats rupees if you aren't careful. Then, explore every shop that you can find on every smp you visit. You will very quickly find places where you can sell something for far more than you can buy it on another server. Complete that transaction, use the money you earned from it to feed more investments. Remember to keep a sizable reserve of rupees, and invest wisely, and you can completely shatter any economic trends that you encounter.

I always wonder how there are many people that rather stick to the town and neither mine nor have efficient town farms - and that buy/sell shops still have empty chests for crafted items like item frames, tnt, bookshelves, repeaters, comparators etc.

Hint "fast crafting": use the bottom bar of your inventory to prepare items for crafting, then use keys 1-9 while pointing at the slots in the crafting grid to move the items into position for crafting. That's way faster than moving them with the mouse...

Actually I have had a few people ban me simply because I can pull ridiculous amounts of cash out of their shops with things like bookcases. It is annoying, but you kinda learn to accept it in stride because honestly it is their fault for not buffering their extra chest space or something.

Actually I have had a few people ban me simply because I can pull ridiculous amounts of cash out of their shops with things like bookcases. It is annoying, but you kinda learn to accept it in stride because honestly it is their fault for not buffering their extra chest space or something.

One guy tried to ban me because I bought a resold wool to that shop. It is because I overbought. Besides the point I always collect and earn stuff to sell to shops. It is honestly their fault for, yes, packing up the chest with dirt or something, and they put down a sell sign, which is intentional of them.

Bookcases (I actually made my first 100K on bookcases, they sell for a suprising amount)TNT (Also a great profit, if you can find someone who buys it, which is rather rare)Redstone componentsMinecart/Minecart tracksQuartz blocks (Lot of money in this, but there is the issue that you have to mine the quartz...)Lilypads: Amazingly, these sell for anywhere from 10-20 Rupee's apice... Or about 30K/swamp you loot.Horse Armor: Sells for a rediculous amount (up to 5k for diamond armor). The problem being you have to find it first...Poisonous Potatoes: I kid you not, they go for 5R apiece, and you can mass farm them.

i buy all this, people never be selling to me doe +taco on smp6 if you got spares

another thing you should add is villager eggs, they shot up in price and if you have a working farm for them im sure most shops would love whatever stock you can get them